Preferences for foods or mates may be passed to offspring before they are born: the phenomenon of instinct known as precocious knowledge.
Category: Evolution
Sociality is an exercise in communication. Nature inclines organisms to certain universal principles of social interchange, as researchers discovered when listening to jackasses talking.
There have been many mass extinction events on Earth. The one currently underway is somewhat novel.
It’s a hoary myth that humans evolved big brains to handle their multitudinous relationships.
In 2017, Indonesian archaeologist and caver Pak Hamrullah discovered a bevy of artwork in a cave on the island of Sulawesi that dates to 44,000 years ago.
Plants adapted to the presence of bats in at least 2 ways: to make it easier for bats to rid plants of potential pests, and for pollination services.
Eulipotyphlans are a taxonomic group of small mammals which include hedgehogs, gymnures (moonrats), solenodons, moles, and shrews of all sorts. Several eulipotyphlans are venomous. Eulipotyphlans with a vicious bite independently evolved this prey-catching assist several times.
Homosexuality has been a conundrum to evolutionary biologists who viewed behaviors from the peephole perspective of reproductive efficacy.
Land plants descended from an alga that learned a critical trick from a friend.
Parrots are forward-thinking animals. As such, they waste a lot of food.
There have been various theories as to why Neanderthals went extinct. A new theory injects disease as a downer.
Bird eggs come in a dizzying array of colors and patterns; each an evolutionary study of adaptation to a specific habitat. There is nonetheless a global trend.
The proof of coherence as the vigor generating Nature is apparent simply by the universe sustaining itself, with entropy ticking away as a specific discretion. The vital energy of life itself defies physics. But nothing so impressively displays coherence as a creative force as the spontaneous generation of biological traits – disabusing Darwinism and the jabberwocky through which matterist scientists deceive themselves and the public.
300 million years ago, some moths started sucking sap for their nutrition. Once flowers showed up, these drab insects turned into beautiful butterflies.
The slimy, hydrated gel called mucus lines all wet epithelia in our bodies – over 200 square meters, including the eyes, lungs, and gastrointestinal and urogenital tracts. Healthy individuals produce several liters of mucus daily. Mucus was long thought merely a lubricant and physical barrier against pathogens. Mucus also acts as a communication filtering device to potentially nefarious microbes.
There are over 3,100 distinct stick insects in tropical and subtropical biomes throughout the world. “The extant diversity is the result of a surprisingly recent and rapid radiation,” exclaims Dutch evolutionary biologist Sabrina Simon.
Researchers recently found the protein responsible for sensing cold in animals, from primitive worms to late-evolved bipeds who read blogs. The protein has a close association with nerve cells. What the researchers did not discover were the obvious implications of what they did discover.
Animals have a broad diversity of diets, including carnivores that pursue dangerous prey, insect herbivores that specialize on a few plants, and marine invertebrates that passively filter feed on tiny fare. What an animal eats is a defining aspect of lifestyle.
Late spring 2013: from the remaining forests of the northeastern United States, cicadas are emerging to mate as the culmination of their 17-year life cycle. Their ways retain enigmas.
Organisms of all kinds rapidly adapt. The more primitive, the more quickly evolution creates a solution. Human pests are exemplary.
Evolution plays favorites. Natural selection favors those that best exploit. Tooth-and-claw Darwinism has its latter-day expression in the economic inequality that pervades the capitalist world. The rich leverage their position to engender the hand-in-glove plutocracy that rules the world, leaving the collective falling further behind. This genteel aggression is a long way from its biological beginnings, though the impact is the same. Hands that evolved to allow hominins to adroitly manipulate the environment with such maladroit intent also afford another employment: less than genteel aggression.